FIFA Under The Law, USA Banks Above The Law

Yesterday the French amused us by celebrating four resistance fighters (out of hundreds of thousands), two of whom (the ladies) were rather advantaged right from the start (and did not do much). Today the humor comes from the USA, which has decided to crack down on soccer. More exactly, FIFA: Fédération Internationale de Football Association. It’s easier to crack down on soccer rather than American football, as the USA are not too good with the former. Moreover, FIFA is a French acronym…

But the irony is not there, the irony is that High Finance steals trillions, while fossil fuels enjoy 5.3 trillion dollars of subsidies (says the IMF), much of it lost in corruption (casual observation).

Putin: [FIFA Scandal] Yet Another Attempt By The USA To Extent Its Jurisdiction To Other States

And what does the USA do? Arrest FIFA officials. Seven senior FIFA officials were arrested at a luxury hotel in Zurich, at the behest of US authorities who are conducting a massive investigation into corruption at football’s governing body. Seven more charged in the USA.

FIFA’s profits last year were 3.3 billion dollars, slightly more profit than the French oil giant TOTAL (one of the five Big Oil oil companies). TOTAL has 100, 000 employees. TOTAL has hundreds of subsidiaries (some part of an effort to pay fewer taxes, something TOTAL said it will change). FIFA has 1,400 employees. So one can say that FIFA’s profits, per employee, is about 70 times those of TOTAL.

The punchline? FIFA, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is registered as a non-profit, of sorts, and pays no Swiss Federal taxes.

This sounds silly, but one has to understand that the world’s plutocracy rests on similar tricks. In the case of FIFA, it’s comical: for years one knew that money was given by nations to get the soccer world cup. For the 1998 cup (won by France), the finalists were France and … Morocco. France got 12 votes, Morocco 7. It was just revealed the Moroccan votes were bought (big surprise!).

The way FIFA is corrupt is typical of the way most international organizations are corrupt:

1) A few officials vote (same story in Brussels, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, etc.), while they supposedly represent the world.

2) All “countries” get an equal weight (209 of them in the case of FIFA, appreciably more than in the UN). So a tiny Caribbean island nobody has ever heard of, but for a few plutocrats, gets the same vote as, say, Brazil, or Germany (total population nearly 300 million).

Once again, in the case of FIFA, it’s comical: FIFA revenue is of the order of five billion dollars. The world’s real economy GDP is around 10,000 times more. However, counting financial derivatives, the world real and imaginary GDP rises another eight times, or so.

And there, the conspiracy factor is much higher. Let me explain.

FIFA’s corruption indeed, is for all to see. Everybody knew that Qatar had bought its world cup selection: clearly only “officials” who were bought could agree to have players playing in 50 Degrees Celsius (in the shade) heat (that’s 122 Fahrenheit, temperatures seen in India this week, courtesy of the fossil fuel industry).

The High Finance industry is hidden in plain sight. But well hidden: the famous 99.9% understand nothing to the public-private fractional reserve banking system, so they can be rolled in flour every day, and then fried, just so. In a way, there is justice; the stupidity of the 99.9% gets punished by the malignant growth of plutocracy, mightily fed by the fact that big bankers are actually corrupt government officials.

That bankers are corrupt, many understand. That bankers are also unsupervised government officials, very few understand. Plutocrats, though, understand this perfectly well.

More generally most plutocrats, and plutocratic organizations, have to do with being on the good side, or in a conspiracy, with government. Most of these conspiracies are intricate enough for common people not to perceive them (an example is the F35 “strike” plane, the most expensive military program, ever, in all of history: 400 billions spent so far, and counting… for an ineffectual plane which will need several more years, just to fire its gun).

So the FIFA scandal, for all to see, is excellent, if one looks at it as a toy example of a much more general problem. However, if it the only thing people worry about, and, somehow, leaves the impression that justice, police and the law are prevailing, worldwide, it will have a nefarious effect.

Why is FIFA’s corruption a toy? Because it involves a few hundreds of million dollars. A particular example is FIFA in Brazil: companies such as Nike paid a hundred million dollars or so, to organize the world cup in Brazil: that was “legal” (it should not be legal, but that’s another matter). Then 70 million dollars were paid below the table. This is what the “authorities” in the USA are in a huff about. This is what they call “corruption”.

Why? Because corruption, in the USA, is above the table: everybody can see the hyper wealthy buying the president in the USA. It’s glorious, it’s all over the media. If you have 200,000 dollars to waste, the president of the USA will go on his knees, and eat crumbs in your hands, such is the nature of the beast.

So how did the banks’ corruption cost? Just for the 2008 crisis? Well just look at the total cost of the “Quantitative Easing“. That’s at least ten trillion dollars (8 in the USA, around 2 in the EU). Even if one upper bounds the FIFA corruption at one billion, this means the High Finance corruption scandal was at least 10,000 times greater. And differently from FIFA the worst part is orders of magnitude greater than that, as it consists in the hundreds of trillions banks diverted in financial derivatives.

If one views the latter, as one should, as the largest corruption, the greatest theft ever, in the history of humanity, one ends up with the astounding realization that banks have stolen for at least ONE MILLION TIMES MORE money than the FIFA has moved under the tables.

“If you touch our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or through using our world class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption…”

The USA is of course “world class”, or even of a class of its own in the world. Especially as far as considering taking orders from plutocrats, others for idiots, and playing holier-than-thou, with the aim of pleasing the banksters. Question: how does Mr. FBI thinks drug trafficking works?

Answer: citizens of the USA spend fortunes on illegal drugs coming from Mexico and the like, so they can forget the sorry world class parody of democracy they live in. Once the drug sellers have pocketed the money, in the world class USA, how do they get it to South and Central America? Through world class banks, of course. American banks. Big banks of the good old USA. Why does not Mr. FBI think about that? Won’t advance his career? I guess not. It’s not “world class” to suspect your masters.

“Nobody is above or beyond the law,” FBI Director Comey said. “We will not stop until we send messages that this is not the way things should be and that they must be different”.

Kabuki theater, on a world scale.

Even Vlad Putin has noticed: “This is yet another blatant attempt (by the United States) to extend its jurisdiction to other states.”

It’s irritating to see Putin marking points. Yes, nobody is above the law. However, the USA itself is above the law, indeed. As Big Banks of the USA are part of this general enterprise, the USA, when they launder money for drug traffickers, they get a slap on the wrist, a little fine (paid by Quantitative Easing, that is, the We The People of the USA themselves).

The USA above the law? Why else the USA does not recognize, and is not part of the International Criminal Court? Simply because many of its top officials would see warrants of arrest against them (starting with those who launched wars of aggression). Instead, what we have now, is tiny Switzerland, anxious to please its masters in Washington and New York, by arresting whoever those capitals (of USA and High Finance, respectively) have decided to arrest.

The considerable attention given to this FIFA scandal is yet another maneuver to focus the attention of We The People on something shiny which moves, on vaguely alien culprits. It is reminiscent of those two low level traders who were prosecuted for the 2008 crisis: one in New York City, one in France. Yes, they were both French. What works best is what is straight out of central casting.

As usual, American “justice” will employ a very corrupt method: make a deal with some “culprits”, such as this Swiss banker who went to jail, in the USA, but then was given around 100 million dollars, by the USA, for having said, for all to hear, what the USA wanted him to say. What kind of “justice” is that? The justice of corruption? But then if justice is corrupt in the name of corruption, where is the real justice located, and what is it?

Thanks GMax! I realized I forgot to push my idea far enough. So I added a significant section, thanks to your suggestion. Here it is:

Why is FIFA’s corruption a toy? Because it involves a few hundreds of million dollars. A particular example is FIFA in Brazil: companies such as Nike paid a hundred million dollars or so, to organize the world cup in Brazil: that was “legal” (it should not be legal, but that’s another matter). Then 70 million dollars were paid below the table. This is what the “authorities” in the USA are in a huff about. This is what they call “corruption”.

Why? Because corruption, in the USA, is above the table: everybody can see the hyper wealthy buying the president in the USA. It’s glorious, it’s all over the media. If you have 200,000 dollars to waste, the president of the USA will go on his knees, and eat crumbs in your hands, such is the nature of the beast.

So how did the banks’ corruption cost? Just for the 2008 crisis? Well just look at the total cost of the “Quantitative Easing”. That’s at least ten trillion dollars (8 in the USA, around 2 in the EU). Even if one upper bounds the FIFA corruption at one billion, this means the High Finance corruption scandal was at least 10,000 times greater. And differently from FIFA the worst part is orders of magnitude greater than that, as it consists in the hundreds of trillions banks diverted in financial derivatives.

If one views the latter, as one should, as the largest corruption, the greatest theft ever, in the history of humanity, one ends up with the astounding realization that banks have stolen for at least ONE MILLION TIMES MORE money than the FIFA has moved under the tables.

Details are still not available, but as far as I can make out there is only one American who should be indicted – Chuck Blazer, who apparently failed to pay any tax for several years. So, presumably to get immunity, said Blazer provides evidence against the others. While those arrested probably are corrupt, there is no direct connection, as far as I can see, with the US. The argument they use US owned banks would seem to me to require the US government to prosecute the banksters for money laundering, if that indeed happened. (Even of they hadn’t, they have done enough other damage to warrant some sort of punitive retribution.) It seems to me that what Putin accused the US government of will be seen as self-evidently true by many – not exactly a towering achievement for the US government.

USA big banks got a slap on the wrist (few billion dollar fine) for DRUG CARTEL money laundering… Lesser soul would have got life sentences, maybe even death sentences (there was at least one case) and certainly seizure of all assets.

BTW, following GMax’s question, I improved the essay by adding a large section explaining the scale of the banks’ thievery…

The USA used the bank pursuits to become the world’s number one money manager, again. It was as outrageous than the Iraq invasion, but worldwide, and nobody has noticed…

As you hint at, Patrice, the politicians are not going to bite the hands that fund their ridiculous electioneering expenses. The need for money at elections guarantees the survival of the very rich plutocrats

Banksters never get jailed, their little Kenyan black servant in the big White House sees to it. Yeah, it is racist, but it is the Big White Masters who are racist to have installed for themselves a small colored know-nothing boy to serve them, as in all big plantations

On Obama’s good servant role, just started an interesting book – The Manufacturing of a President – Wayne Madsen (former intelligence type and current gadfly).

Madsen found that it seems pretty obvious that Obama’s mother and her parents were CIA-types going all the way back to OSS service in Lebanon during WWII (thought they were farmers in Kansas or something didn’t you?).

Madsen was a big Obama booster in the 2008 election when one of his old intelligence buddies told him he “had no idea who Obama is and what he represents!” So Madsen started digging (in public and long declassified records). Sometimes you don’t know the real story, but studying the shadows can tell you a lot.

For instance, he found that Obama’s maternal grandfather was a supposed furniture salesman who moved around a lot, but apparently worked for furniture stores that only existed on paper. Madsen explains why this has signs of a classic CIA “retail cover story” technique.

And Obama’s mother was apparently not born in Wichita, Kansas as we have been told, but in Lebanon while her parents were then serving with the OSS (the CIA’s predecessor) there in 1942.

And his mother was in the Far East in Indonesia etc., not because she was a “hippy”, but because she was frequently working there on US AID assignments (a NOTORIOUS cover back then for CIA officers in third-world countries). (I should note also that the CIA is very big on nepotism – Aldrich Ames’ father was CIA.)

Interestingly, Obama’s grandfather (then working for a non-existent furniture store in Hawaii) was involved with bringing her future husband to Hawaii from Kenya for university study as part of a CIA-program to counter the Russians then-program of educating thousands of future African leaders in Moscow.

Oh yeah, his grandmother also worked for a bank in Hawaii where she handled, as a VP, the CIA trust accounts for the Far East (cough, bribery fund, cough) (that, by itself, doesn’t make her CIA, BUT taken with everything else . . . )

Which raises VERY interesting questions about how Obama came to be promoted to his present position (and explains the odd affection of the “Hope and Change” President for the national security state, (e.g. only use of 1918 espionage act in last 50 years to go after CIA/NSA whistle blowers; appointment of CIA “old boy” Gates as SecDef and torturer John Brennan as CIA Head).

All of which might explain the TPP furor (and its secrecy) as a CIA-conceived anti-China maneuver to maintain control of the Strait of Malacca (which transits about 40% of world trade). The same sort “big strategic thinking” as the CIA “domino effect” that got us into the CIA-run Vietnam War.

I don’t think it’s necessary to go over the CIA’s long-standing role as the muscle for the American plutocracy abroad. Coupled with Poppy Bush’s CIA connections, all of this is profoundly disturbing for just how deep the plutocracy national security state actually runs and the essentially papier-mâché quality of the reality we are presented with.

The only hopeful note is that all this stuff has to be done in deepest secrecy and whistleblowers persecuted because like vampires it really could not survive in the daylight.

Yes, well, as a friend of Obama among some of the people now still living who have known him the longest… I must admit I fell for it… Until shortly before he assumed the presidency, and things I had personally observed struck me. I then went on the equivalent, for me, of three year depression.

And I am tough, as today’s mountain run, marked by a wasp attack, demonstrates. Even with more than two dozen stings, many still planted, I can run (no choice, mountains have to be descended, ha ha ha). I am real tough, but to discover that, once again, the plutocratic machine had played me, struck, deep in the heart, and hurts more (OK, not really).

in the South China Sea, the situation is difficult. China People Republic is marching towards war. Or hegemony. In truth, PRC seems persuaded it can reach hegemony, by scaring the others into submission. Xi no doubt loves the distraction. However that’s extremely dangerous. Situation even worse with North Korea.

What were/are the big thinkers of USA intelligence thinking? That all plutocracy needs is a jolly war? It may well happen. Thus this seems to be a case of aiding and abetting (PRC and NK are been played by letting them get ever bolder. A few more years (or even months) of that, and war will happen.
PA
PA

I’m sure you know the old saying, “When the elephants fight, the grass suffers.” When plutocrats contest, ordinary people (like peasants in the medieval wars between the nobility) are the ones who die.

Hey, Patrice.
I’m a member of your club! They’re censuring me too. I posted some of the odd CIA connections with Obama on DailyKos and it was immediately taken down as violating “site rules” (which are either never say anything bad about Obama OR there are never any conspiracies anywhere and especially not involving the CIA).

Congratulations, Roger! I am proud! I never tried to post any link at the Daily Kos. They barred me for saying extremely mild things. Because I expressed some critiques against Obamacare (which everybody now recognizes, BTW), I was labeled, called a troll, and harassed, as a “Neo-Con”. Never mind that I was on the record as a vehement Bush/Iraq War/Plutocracy critic!

I made an inquiry later: the Daily Kos was founded by CIA employees. Next best thing to hanging a CIA shingle outside…

Hi Chris! Nice to see you alive and kicking the ball!
Hmmm… What? The FBI originally took down seven USA plutocrats in connection with FIFA, including one called, appropriately, “Waltzer”. That’s the handle.

I added a giant section, per courtesy of GMax’s suggestion. Basically I computed banksters stole ONE MILLION TIMES MORE MONEY, than the FIFA is supposed to have circulated under the tables.

The US has punished more bankers than anyone else. The USA may not be perfect, but Europe is way above it in terms of corruption, sleazy nepotism and inaction in the face of corruption. The EU ALSO deposed a democratically-elected PM (Papandreou of Greece) for having the affrontery to suggest a referendum of his people on the euro. They replaced him with an establishment apparatchik, which reminded me of the Nazis imposing some Gauleiter on a vassal country in WWII. Europe is also disarming while Russia masses armour on the Ukranian border. Will the evil US once AGAIN have to come to the aid of the useless Europeans?

Dear Chris: I will not contest that the elimination of plutocrat PM Papandreou (3 families are most prominent in Greece, including Papandreou’s) just because Merkel and whoever was French prez was grotesque: the Greeks ought to have been allowed to vote.

Now for banksters, the Europeans, two centuries ago, were in the hands of the Rothschilds, as Rothschilds themselves said, and Prez Jackson of the USA insisted. However, in recent times, people like Mario Draghi are purely made in the USA, and mad from plutocracy (Draghi = MIT PhD, Goldman Sachs Vice Presidency).

That Europe is disarming is, indeed sheer madness. But Cameron is disarmer number one. At least France has decided to hold the military budget steady. But then the defense of the West is becoming a Franco-Obama affair… And we know about Obama’s resolve (see his 180 degrees about Assad).

My interpretation of the FIFA-USA showdown is otherwise more subtle than yours: it’s mostly a red herring to make We The People of the USA believe that the FBI is after (the biggest) organized crime, that the USA is not a corrupt organization, that High Finance, USA style, is beyond any suspicion, considering the vigilance of the FBI, etc…

What about the big fraud aspect of it all? Soccer is the number one moneu making sport, but it’s not controlled by the Yankees. They just want the money. The FBI wants the USA to get the money. Same stuff with banks, as you said: the USA used prosecution of Swiss bankers, so US bankers would replace them

As far as I am concerned, the hysterical FIFA prosecution, with the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, coming to the attack with her rehearsed role, supported by the IRS top guy, is evidence of USA corruption. I am not saying that it is not a good thing to prosecute corrupt FIFA officials.

Just, it’s a joke relative to USA bankster corruption. THAT citizens, not just taxpayers, an enormous lot. Little grandmother getting 0% on their savings, the real economy starved of money, banksters and their politicians (including sweet Loretta, soon enough) running away with all the money in the world, etc…

FIFA corruption is a ZERO SUM GAME. Bankster gangrene is a threat to civilization, and civilization gets hurt. We the People die under austerity, while the banksters and their politicians jump in their jets and hide in their giant private estates. In the case of FIFA, sum CEOs made a tiny bit less, money, and so did a few shareholders. Or maybe not.